+Great retro-style to character models+Interesting
soundtrack
with
both
modern
and retro versions+Interesting
approach
to
character
customization-Boring
and
tedious
combat-Boring dungeon design-Complete
lack
of
enemy
variety

ClaDun: This is an RPGis a retro-styled dungeon
crawler published by NIS America as a downloadable title for the PSP.
The game showcases 8-bit style graphics and even the option to switch
the soundtrack to 8-bit. It attempts to recreate the early days of
gaming.
Sadly, when it comes to gameplay, ClaDun
copies all the wrong things
from dungeon crawlers of yore. Featuring a long string of repetitive
dungeons and enemies, ClaDun
features a lot of style and not a lot of substance.

The problems with ClaDun begin immediately when the
game presents players with a long cut-scene to begin. The
story
revolves around the mysterious land of Arcanus Cella, which is said to
have a plethora of legendary treasure. A girl by the name of Pudding,
who is apparently terminally ill , goes off in search of the treasure,
along with her friend Souma. The game seems to present these two
characters as the leads in the story, but this couldn't be further from
the case. The story quickly loses focus on these characters, and
players aren't even required to use them beyond some introductory
areas. Though the story begins with some funny moments, with these
two characters breaking into the house of a surly sorceress upon
arriving in Arcanus Cella, it quickly goes off the rails from there.
The game will present players with story scenes as they go through the
main dungeons, but there's no structure or coherence to them. The
overall story is barely explained, instead introducing new characters
with poorly explained back stories that characters constantly refer to.
These scenes try to be funny, but on the whole they fail to be humorous
in
any way. The lack of emoting of any kind really hurts the effort at
comedy. With no character animations the characters just end up coming
off as stiff. All the story scenes can be skipped, and players would be
wise to do so.

Music is one area where ClaDun actually shines.
The tunes are well composed and memorable, and there's even an option
to switch to a retro version of the soundtrack, which still sounds
quite good. It features everything from rock type songs, to even a jazz
type tune with blaring saxophones. The soundtrack is a lot of fun, even
if the number of different tracks is small. The actual game
sounds, on the other hand, are bland. Weapon and spell noises all
sound similar and generic, and take away a lot of the weight that
attacks should have. Since the game requires the use of the same weapon
combos and spells over and over, the sounds quickly become
annoying. Enemy attacks suffer similarly, and some enemy attacks don't
even make noise. It's a sad contrast to the music, and really hurts the
overall audio presentation of the game. The developers were clearly
going for a retro-style with the game sounds, but the game will remind
players of the worst of the 8-bit days, not the best.

ClaDun's unique character customization
system.

The graphics, in a similar
fashion, are mixed. The character sprites successfully evoke the
older days of gaming, and animate quite well. The hub town from which
players enter the dungeon is nicely designed, and the different houses
have a lot of character. Though the individual monsters look great, the
same monsters are re-used over and over. This is
broken up by the occasional boss monster, but even those get re-used.
Sometimes enemy colors are palatte swapped, which for some of them
means
a change in element, and for others it is quite meaningless. The
tilesets in the dungeons are even worse. They lack any of the
creativity that the town shows, despite there being a large number of
different dungeons. For the first few hours they seem to change up,
going from a desert to an ice based dungeon, but beyond that the tiles
are reused ad nauseam. When
seeing the same kinds of tiles, monsters,
and traps dungeon after dungeon, the graphics very quickly lose
any sort of retro charm they might have.

Repetition being the
overarching issue ClaDun
suffers from, the same can be said of the combat. There's four weapon
types in the game: hammers, swords, axes, and staves. The melee weapons
are largely very similar, with staves being the only ranged type,
firing slow magic projectiles. The lack of variety extends to combat
itself, with much of combat boiling down to using the same three hit
combo and blocking repeatedly. There are skills and spells available as
well as characters level, but these mostly involve also reusing the
same attack animations and just adding elemental damage. Each of the
dungeons in the game features multiple floors, which serve as separate
stages that can be accessed individually from the hub town. The goal
is always to get to the exit. Save for a few maps that require
opening chests, and a few where one can simply run
to the end, killing the monsters is the only way to open up the
path out of a floor. Since there's no way of telling this, other than
by
boss type monsters, it means trudging through trap-filled environments
killing the majority of the monsters. Perhaps had there been other
types of objectives to complete, the weakness of the battle system
wouldn't have been so magnified.

Why can't I just smash through this wall and
avoid the tedium?

The way in which players
actually customize characters is interesting. One can make their
own characters or use story characters, each with different
classes which effect the skills they learn and the magic circles they
get. The magic circle is a grid of sorts, with the chosen character at
the center. One can place several other characters, depending on the
grid, and these characters will soak up damage for the main character
in
battle. In addition, based on their mana attribute, which increases
upon leveling, players will be able to place a number of artifacts in
slots on the grid to increase the stats of the chosen character. Its an
interesting system, especially since the secondary characters still
gain xp, but can often be long and tedious to setup. The
unbalanced difficulty often requires one to reconfigure magic circles
to gain an edge, so players will be required to do this setup much too
frequently.

In the end, ClaDun just doesn't have much going
for it beyond the retro trappings. Environments and enemies are
repeated much too frequently, and the shallow combat just isn't
interesting enough to keep players going. The unbalanced difficulty
often requires tedious amounts of grinding just to make any sort of
progress. Even extras like a challenging random dungeon and the ability
to design character sprites can't save players from the tedium the game
presents them with. There is a door in the hub town that ends the game,
giving the player a bad ending and sending them to the credits. This
will quickly become an irresistible option.